RUIN - Part Three (The RUIN Series Book 3) (3 page)

This is what it must feel like to be driving in the middle of a fog patch. You know that you're headed in the right direction but beyond that, everything is murky and hard to place. I need Parker to explain more to me but hearing him tell me that Ben gave him the money for the ring has stalled everything in my mind.

"You said that Ben told you to make Elsie's dreams come true?" I want Parker to repeat it back to me. It doesn't add up.

He scrubs his hand over his face. "I didn't realize he used her name until the next morning when I woke up and thought about what had happened. I sent him a text message telling him I'd pay him back when I could and he replied saying that knowing Elsie would be happy was enough for him."

"Why would he think the ring was for her?" My eyes drop to the floor where the wayward ring box still sits. Parker never bent down to pick it up and I never offered to retrieve it either. It holds absolutely no meaning to me now. He may as well give it to Elsie.

"I was all over the place in the bar." He runs both his hands through this hair, pushing the curls back from his forehead. "I guess he just assumed that Elsie was the one I wanted."
She was. He wanted her enough to leave me only a few weeks ago. Parker wasn't kidding when he said he was all over the place. He still is. He's adrift emotionally and looking for anyone who can give him an anchor. I know that's the only reason he wants to marry me. It's because she dumped him. Being alone is torture to him.

"You corrected him at some point I'm guessing." I'm not really guessing. I know he did. The conversation they shared when they walked into his apartment is proof of that.

"I called him again about a week after that." He licks his upper lip. "I felt guilty about the money so I told him I wanted to work out a repayment plan."

"That makes sense." It does. Parker is proud. He's always been too proud to go to his wealthy family and ask them for any help at all. The fact that he took money from a stranger to buy a ring is shocking. The fact that he wanted to pay it back isn't surprising in the least.

"That's when I corrected him and told him the woman I loved was named Kayla."

I stare at him, my lips slightly ajar. I want to say something that will halt this in its tracks now. I don't want to know any details beyond this because it's when everything shifts to something more sinister. It's the point where Ben transforms from the helpful, kind and caring stranger to the man who used Parker and me to try and get his brother back.

"Did he tell you that he knew me then?" I ask quietly.

His jaw tenses slightly. "He said he was actually coming out of your apartment that night we met. He said you knew his brother, Noah. I asked if it was Alexa's Noah and he said it was. I realized then that's how you met him. It was through them."

"What else did he say?" Judging by Parker's lack of response to Ben's kiss on my forehead earlier he hasn't connected the dots enough to know that Ben and I are lovers. I'm not going to change that by correcting him about the details of how I met Ben.

"He said you were a good person." A small smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. "I said I already knew that."

"What else?" I push through the pleasantries. I need to.

His eyes move over my face. "He said that you were helping him accept some stuff that happened between him and his brother a long time ago. I didn't ask for the details."

I'm grateful for that. What happened between Noah and Ben when they were teenagers isn't Parker's business. Pulling him into that circle of information isn't something I'd ever do. Ben and Noah's pain is theirs alone to share with who they choose. "Ben said that you had a deal?"

"We did." He nods only slightly as if he doesn’t want to fully acknowledge it. "Ben told me to keep the money for the ring. He said he just needed more time with you to help him deal with what happened between him and Noah. He said you were the best friend he's ever had."

Those words should buoy my heart. I know, judging by the routine of Ben's life that he doesn't have close friends he confides in. Work is his focus. It's how he shoulders the burdens of his past. "You agreed to give him that time with me?"

"I did." He pinches the bridge of his nose. "I thought you could help him while I worked on finding a new place for us to live."

My eyes take in the room. This apartment had been my safe place for a few months before I'd been thrown back into the sea of uncertainty that Parker had tossed me into when he left me. I imagined we'd build our lives together in this place and now all I see when I look around is emptiness and what could have been.

"Today you told Ben you wanted to talk to me," I say the words evenly. I'm not bringing it up because I want to know what Parker was going to say if Ben would have given him the green light. I'm sure it would have included a marriage proposal and the promise of a future that would have lasted only a few months until someone else caught Parker's eager and willing eye.

"A few days ago I called him and told him I wanted to talk to you." His expression is as vacant as I feel right now. "I just wanted to know if you still wanted me."

I don't delve into that pool because I'd have to tell Parker the truth, which is that I stopped wanting him weeks ago. "He wouldn't let you talk to me?"

"He told me he was coming to town this weekend and we'd talk then." He shrugs.

It stings even though it shouldn't. The mere fact that Parker gave up on talking to me so easily only bolsters my belief that we were never really meant to be. "That's what was going on when I overheard you."

His lips thin into grimace. "I shouldn't have agreed to what he wanted, Kayla. I should have come right back to New York to ask you to marry me but I've been so nervous about how you'd react that I kept putting it off. He kept telling me to take time to think things through. He said he didn't think I was over Elsie yet. I was really confused. Now everything is all fucked up."

"Everything works out the way it's supposed to, Parker," I offer as I pull myself to my feet. "It wouldn't have worked between us anyway."

"Why not?" He doesn't move from where he's seated.

"I don't love you anymore." I look directly at his face as the words leave my lips. "It's over for me. It ended the night you left me for her."

He doesn't respond. I see nothing within his expression so I turn on my heels, walk across the apartment and out of Parker's life for good.

"What time are you done for the day?" His deep voice jars me out of the number coma I've been stuck in for much of the afternoon. I wish I could say that I was doing something fascinating like working out the details of a big merger, or planning out the investment strategy of a client, but I'm balancing Vivian's checkbook for her. Yes, this is the life of a single, accomplished woman in Manhattan.

"Noah." I grip the side of my desk to calm my shaking hands. I'd been avoiding his texts since they started to roll in on Saturday evening shortly after I left Parker's apartment. I sent him back one, brief response, early Sunday morning after I'd been woken up by a loud argument in the room next to me in a hotel I stayed at. I'd debated calling my mother to see if I could crash in my old room but the price for that would have been too steep. Answering questions about Parker and me, and my time in New York was too much for me to handle at the time. It's too much to bear now.

"We need to talk." There's urgency in his words.

I glance at the clock on the wall behind his head. It's after six. I can leave any time after four but on this Monday, the mindless haze of doing anything but sitting in my apartment has been my goal. I have to face my reality, in the form of Noah, now. "I can leave now."

"Let's go downstairs to the diner." He motions towards my office door. "I'll buy you an early dinner."

The thought of food itself is enough to make my stomach recoil. I haven't eaten more than a few bites of an apple since I woke up yesterday. Food, sleep and functioning normally are all out of my reach. "I'll just watch you eat."

"You'll eat." His hand grazes over my shoulder as I walk next to him towards the bank of elevators. The offices are silent. Vivian and everyone else left for the day with quiet goodbyes hours ago. I know they could sense I wasn't in the mood for idle chitchat.

"I'm not hungry." Arguing such an unimportant point seems futile. I know Noah well enough to know that it's easier to acquiesce to what he wants, especially if it's something this mundane.

He looks down at me, his eyes raking over my face. "You look tired. Did you sleep last night?"

Normally if a man made a remark like that, I'd be offended but I've seen what I look like in the mirror. I hadn't slept. I had replayed my time in Parker's apartment over and over again in my mind all last night. I haven't spoken to him or Ben since. I'm not sure I ever will again. "I didn't sleep much."

"You'll sleep better tonight." His hand is on my lower back as he steers me into the elevator car. "We have a lot to talk about."

He's right. We do. I have to tell him that even though I've spent weeks trying to convince him that Ben is a good person, that I was wrong. I have to tell him that I gave him false hope right before his wedding to Alexa. I have to confess that I was blinded by Ben's charm and sensual persuasion. To put it simply, I have to admit that I fucked up royally and pulled both him and Alexa right into the heart of the mess.

We ride the elevator in silence before I follow him through the lobby of the building and out into the streets of lower Manhattan. Working in a building on Wall Street fueled me when I first came to this city months ago, but now, since I've returned post Parker break-up, I've felt out of place. The people who work here are in control of their lives. I don't belong here. I don't belong in Boston anymore either.

"There's a place down the street we can eat at." He motions to the left and I nod.

I feel as though I'm a pirate walking the plank for stealing a bounty that never belonged to her. I took things from Noah that I shouldn't have. I exposed fragments of him that he wanted hidden. I saw the vulnerable parts of his heart that are only reserved for Alexa.

We enter the bustling eatery and instantly I'm assaulted with the rumbling din of the crowd in the small space. I wish I had insisted on Noah taking me home. At least there, I can find my center enough that I can confess without having to raise my voice just to be heard.

"Over there." He gestures towards an empty table near the back of the eatery. It's small and pushed into a corner but at the very least it will offer some solace from the noise. I follow him, running the first words that I want to say to him through my mind. I want to soften the blow if that's even possible.

"I've never been here," I say quietly as we sit next to each other. I haven't.  I typically don't eat more for lunch than a piece of fruit or a salad I've brought from home. I've heard about the homemade soup here from Vivian. I know, without a doubt, that if they didn't deliver, I'd be racing down here on a daily basis to grab her lunch for her.

"You only sent me back one text when you were in Boston." His eyes search the expansive menu. "I was worried about you."

I'm touched by his concern. Before I left for Boston he'd confided that he liked hanging out with me. I felt as though we were finding our way into a trusted friendship. It meant a lot at the time because of our combined connections of Alexa and Ben. Now, I feel like a fraud for still wanting that. I don't have any close friends beyond Alexa. Having Noah in my corner too meant more than I was willing to admit to him or to myself.

The waitress appears out of nowhere rattling off an impressive list of daily specials. I opt for the soup of the day and Noah settles on a fish and chips platter. After taking our orders, she's gone back into the crowd in a flash.

"Your ex-boyfriend is an asshole."

My eyes jump from the worn and chipped wooden table to his face. "What did you just say?"

"That guy, Parker, he's an ass." He cocks a brow as if he's waiting for confirmation.

Alexa must have told him about my break up and now he's assuming that I saw Parker when I was in Boston. It's an assumption anyone would leap to. I can't deny that if Ben wasn't in the picture, and I wasn't in search of my long lost damage deposit, that I wouldn't have wanted to meet up with Parker. I needed the closure last Saturday had given me. I just hadn't realized it until I walked out of his apartment.

"He's an ass, yes," I confirm with a sly smile. "I'm not sure what I ever saw in him."

"Happiness," he offers as he takes a sip of the water in front of him. "You moved back to Boston to be with him a few months ago. You must have cared a lot about him."

"I did." There's a bite of pleasure as I use the past tense. "I don't care about him anymore."

His eyes waft over the table next to us before they settle back on my face. "I'm glad. He really hurt you."

"Alexa told you how he left me." I can't meet his eyes. I'm afraid I'll cry. I thought I was over the pain of Saturday, but now, talking about Parker again has brought everything that I heard between him and Ben back to the surface.

I sense him moving forward as I hear the table creak beneath the weight of his elbows. "Alexa didn't tell me, Kayla. Ben did."